"I'll meet you here tomorrow morning" at whatever time the authors elided for the sake of expediency? Dross says.

"An hour past dawn."

Nod.

And Blai goes to crash for the night because there have been many errands all day long.

[Cleric Level 2!]

........does this one come with an underexplained improvement in some ability?

Nope!

Okay! He's going to go to sleep then! Maybe the magisters can help explain when he sees them tomorrow.

In the morning he prays as normal and walks out loaded up on on (just one this time) Share Language and two Lesser Restorations, and a Remove Blindness, and some Comprehend Languages and... a Remove Sickness, in case anybody comes to him sick, that'll let them hold on till he can get back to them with a proper Remove Disease. He pays for the most portable available breakfast on his way out.

Both Dross and the Gnoll with the blind friend from yesterday are waiting for him outside.

"Hello," the Gnoll says. "Are you—ready to go?"

"Yes, I have the spell now."

He'll lead the way. At first he has to slow down a few times because he's going too fast for the rest of them to keep up at a walk (Gnolls have long legs!), but he learns to keep pace.

The southeast part of the city is more Gnoll-inhabited, and the architecture turns taller and denser, with narrow streets, apartments instead of houses, and more street vendors and people just sitting out of their porches, making handicrafts or passing the time. There are Gnoll children running in the street on four limbs, with parents craning out windows to tell them to slow down.

Feels more city-ish here. He didn't know gnolls were quadru- well, humans are also quadrupeds when they're very young but they're not that fast at it.

They'll end at a shabby-looking apartment building. The Gnoll knocks on a door on the ground-floor. There's a bit of banging, the sound of a latch sliding open, and a red-furred Gnoll limping with a peg-leg opens the door. He's missing an eye, and the the other is scarred.

He sniffs and sags a bit against the doorframe.. "Eshur. If you lost your key again, I'll bite you."

        "Yarrow. What I was saying yesterday—"

"Not you too."

        "Did Risha talk to you already? Look, he's already here, and the translator, it's not going to do any harm. Give it a try."

"She's in there. Just come in." He turns his head. "Rish, make yourself useful and get us some water!"

...Uh, that went by a bit too fast to translate. Dross is just going to summarize, whispering, as, "They're arguing about something—there's someone else in there, getting water."

"I can make water."

Dross says to Blai, quietly, "Uh, I think it's a—hospitality thing, like water in a glass, not..."

Oh look they're being invited in.

He didn't prep a Cultural Adaptation because it turns out that the only thing worse than being anxious about everything all the time is to be anxious about everything all the time and also blaringly constantly aware that every mechanism you have to manage that and navigate the world through it is wrong and rude and foreign. It is in fact so bad that it renders his own feelings into an operational constraint. He nods at the water and guesses-and-checks through the social interaction till he can see a patient.

The other brown-furred Gnoll from yesterday is here, if Blai can tell them by face. She brings water. Nobody touches it.

"So what's it this time? Creams? Needles? Don't tell me: Tea? Humans love tea, don't they."

        "I think he just, uh, touches you. It's a spell."

"Just touches me. Don't tell me you brought someone with [Remove Blindness]."

        "I don't know what that is. Yarrow. It'll take five seconds, and you can yell at me once he's gone. Please."

Huff. "Can't hurt me."

(Dross cues when Blai should do the thing.)

"Remove Blindness."

"Fuck that's bright—dead gods—" He's crying. Unclear whether it's from the visual stimulus or emotion.

(Dross does not attempt to translate that, which is good because otherwise he would have a headache.)

        "How much," murmurs the first Gnoll while his friend is calming down. "Don't suppose you do legs."

"I can't do your leg since it's missing entirely and not just damaged. I can only do one of these a day, but they're not well-known enough to be at auction yet and I don't know what they'll command, and I'm still getting used to the local value of money, what do you think would be fair?"

"Lowest it goes is 250 gold pieces," says Yarrow once it's translated, never mind that he can't pay that. He's staring around his apartment like he's seeing it for the first time. "There's five [Healers] in Izril that can do that and not one of them lives outside Tenbault or Ersenshire. Anyone else is lying. Except you, it looks like. Shit."

"- I definitely wasn't expecting anything like that much."

(CW mild surgical body horror)

"Anything a healing potion can't fix or fixed wrong costs an arm and a leg. Eye injuries are the worst. Bone injuries—tricky, but there are [Bone Healers] to go around and if it's not too bad and they're halfway competent the worst you end up with is a weak knee. Eye problems are rare, so no one specializes in them. And they're hard, especially nerve damage. The [Precision Healer-Mage] I know can do it, he puts a tiny mana-infused pin inside your eye and controls it with magic to rewire the nerves* like a needle and thread, all while pumping you full of healing potion. Takes half a day and hurts like hell."

*not actually how this works but this guy is working off third-degree hearsay.

"- I understand that it's rare. But I came here and did it without setting a price of my own volition, and do not mean to bankrupt you, and you are only the second person I've cast this spell for, I'm not well-known enough to charge whatever the market might bear next year."

"Yeah, Eshur's a moron." He kicks the other Gnoll with his wooden leg, eliciting a yelp. "I can't pay you that even if I sell everything I have. It's just what the going price is. I can show you a dozen folks who'll pay you fifty gold and be happy about it; they've been saving up for the expensive [Healers]. How about I do you ten, and I'll introduce you to those people? None of us with a lick of sense will trust an ad."

        "I'll pay for it, I'm the one who—ow."

"Shut the fuck up." He digs in his belt for the coin.